Why Fight?
by cymberleah
Summary: A quick story of the reasoning behind Videl's reasons for being the hero of Satan City


Guess what? I don't own Dragonball Z. Suprised?   
Please don't sue.  
  
  
Videl sat and looked out the window of her class. The teacher below droned on about unnecessary clauses in an English sentence, but she didn't care. She had just gotten back to school after fighting a group of hijackers. Yesterday she had been needed to stop jewel thieves and last week it was a high-speed chase after a dangerous driver. Now that the adreniline was wearing off she felt every new bruise. She tried to tense and relax her muscles to keep from stiffening up, but it was a losing effort.  
  
She was tired. She hardly had time to train and study and fight and go to school and have a life. But everything was so important. She could hardly ignore the people who needed her, and she needed to go to school. She was bruised from a fall that one of the hijackers tripped her into, and her pride still stung as much as her bruised bottom. The daughter of the strongest man in the world should not be able to be tripped by the bad guy. She should have seen it coming. Never mind that fighting more than one opponent at once made it hard to keep track of just where everyone was, she should have been able to do it.   
  
She trained hard that night, going over the situation over and over again until she came up with multiple ways to have not been tripped by the guy, but she worried. She was very good at not making the same mistake twice, but she was too smart to think that she was running out of mistakes to make. One of these days someone was going to get lucky and she was going to get hurt. When she stopped training she went to her room to study, flopping down on her bed and propping the book on a pillow. She started to try to memorize the assignment but the unnecessary clause in English still couldn't hold her attention and she began to brood.  
  
She always got depressed when she got hurt. She knew better than to entertain such defeatist thoughts. She was the daughter of the great Mr. Satan. No one was a better fighter on the entire planet then her dad. Every year her father won the world championship tournament, no matter who came after him, no matter what their fighting style. He had been able to defeat the great Cel. How could anything she was able to do for the city stack up against what he had done for the world? Maybe she could save lives, but he had saved everyone's life.  
  
She was awfully proud of her dad, but sometimes his reputation was a bit hard to live up to. She rolled over but with a grimace quickly rolled back on her stomach. Her bottom was one huge bruise from her fall. She could ignore the pain when fighting or training, but it was difficult to ignore at other times. The chairs at school had been horrible today. She hoped that no one noticed how hard it was for her to keep a straight face and not fidget.  
  
It was on days like today that she tried to figure out why she needed to save the city. Her life would be so much easier if she just stopped fighting crime and let the police handle it. The throbbing from her bruises seemed to agree with letting other people handle trouble. But that was one thing she could not do. It was too important for her to help others, and besides, she could help in places that the police couldn't.  
  
Maybe it was because her mother had left her and her father so long ago. Even though she knew it wasn't her mom's fault, she still felt betrayed and guilty. Her mom should not have died, should not have left her and her father alone. Her father had tried to bury his grief by fighting, and for him the training had eased the pain and allowed him to forget his grief. unfortunately, he also seemed to forget about her.  
  
In the beginning, Videl had trained because her father was training. She tagged along with him to the gym, unwilling to be alone. He might not have paid much attention to her, but just being near him had helped her deal with her grief. Getting stronger was another way to force the grief aside with physical pain, at least momentarily. But when her father had fought Cel, she watched with the rest of the world, hoping that he would survive while unable to ignore the certainty that he would leave her, just as her mother had.  
  
When he alone was left standing as the savior of the world, Videl experienced an epiphany. She saw the cheering masses of people and shared their hero worship of her father. She saw their love for him, and she wanted that love herself. Her father had mostly ignored her in his pursuit of his training, and she was feeling the need to win his love back. If so many loved her father for being a hero, maybe he would love her, too, if she were one.  
  
With renewed purpose she attacked her training, learning all she could so she could help others as her father had. She watched as he grew absorbed with his image and grew farther away from her, and she knew she had to do something quick.   
  
Her lucky break came only a week after she decided to go looking for trouble. Someone was trying to mug an old lady. The early evening was dark and quiet, and no one came running at the sound of the lady's screams. No one, that is, except Videl.   
  
She still grinned at the memory of the incredulous expression on the mugger's face as she came running towards them. She couldn't blame him for not being afraid of a twelve year old. He threatened her with a knife, telling her to get home to her mommy before he cut her open. Videl casually stopped running and walked into the pool of light under a street lamp.   
  
"Come on," she said. "I'm going to stop you." The mugger just laughed and proceeded to ignore her, but it was hard for him to ignore her when she had knocked him down. He rolled over, but before he could get up again she had him tied and handcuffed.  
  
"Who are you?" he asked. "I'm Videl," she said proudly when the police arrived. "I'm the daughter of the most powerful fighter in the world.   
  
Her reputation had grown in the city, but just as it had grown, so had the rift between her and her father. They lived in a house big enough for a week to go by before they saw each other. He grew more and more absorbed with his image and she needed to train so she could defeat the evil men who plagued the city.   
  
Her father encouraged her, though. Her fame increased his own, and her battles were seen as extensions of his fame. She was his daughter, and she was a force for good. It wasn't a bad addendum to the legend of the most powerful fighter in the world.  
  
For Videl, it wasn't enough. She craved his attention, craved the time when she had been a member of a family and not the member of an image. Videl frowned unconciously. When she had found out that her father didn't love her, just the fame she brought him, her need for her father's affection crumbled into dust and left her with a big, gaping hole in her heart.   
  
To fill the space, there was a period of time where she had fought just for herself, for her fame. She wanted to be the best there was, to finally move out from under her father's shadow, but it never happened. She was too much her father's daughter. All her exploits were just added to her father's legacy, when all she wanted was to divorce any mention of her father from her life. She surmised, correctly, that while he might not miss the love that he had so casually thrown away, he might miss the reflected glory she attatched to his name. She began to grow depressed, but something happened to change that.   
  
A little girl had been kidnapped two years ago. Just the memory of it was enough to make Videl frown, but she had found the kidnappers before anything unfixable happened to the girl. It had been a near thing, though, and as she returned the child to her anxiously waiting parents, she felt a deep sense of satisfaction that she had never known before.  
  
Seeing the child reunited with her family, she knew that the only reason there had been a happy ending was because of her. The police could never have gotten the child out in time. They hadn't the training to do so, but she did. She could save the child. Seeing her with her family, her heroics stopped being something that she did because she needed something from others. She had gone looking for the girl to add to her name, to her fame. Everyone would cheer Videl, the savior of the kidnapped child. The child's problem was only hers because it could help her spread her fame. But seeing the expressions of love and relief on the faces of the child's parents, her heart was touched and she saw how greedy her motives really were. She was just as bad as her father. That realization shocked her, and she decided on the spot that she would no longer go looking for fame.  
  
She now did it because others needed something from her. She had the training that others did not. For most of them it was never a lack in their lives, but when bad things happened like they had tonight, her training was needed. She was needed. She could make things better where no one else could. And if she got a few bruises, or even if she died, she had to try. She couldn't have these skills and keep them to herself when they were so desperately needed.  
  
Finally, she had found her place. She had been looking for some one who needed her, and when her father needed nothing form her, she turned to the city, the city that needed a hero.   
  
She grew more determined to help others. She was their hope, and in some cases their only hope. She could not fail them. She had to help whenever she could. She was their hero. She was their hero because the people of the city needed someone to be their hero, and she needed to be needed by them.  
  
Sometimes she needed to remember why she fought for others, but when she was done brooding she was filled with determination to stop the people who would hurt others to satisfy their selfish ends. All those who would harn the innocent would face their avenger, the hero of Satan City, Videl!   
  
A sharp snap brought her out of her reverie, and she looked at her broken pencil with a bemused expression on her face. After getting a fresh pencil, she started to work on her assignment again, but before she got very far she was interrupted by a call for help. It seemed like someone had taken over a retirement care facility and was going to execute the ones who never got visitors as a sick plea for people to not ignore their parents and grandparents when they got old.   
  
She ran out of the house, all bruises and stiffness forgotton as she one again heeded the caqll of those who needed her. 


End file.
